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I said I didn't read anything, but I guess you just wanted to say learn2read

So we'll never clear out the XP, I mean, monster generators until they're below our ECL or something? Assuming that's the mechanic you're using. Still, carry on, I can live with the imbalances of the universe that drive lesser autists insane.

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You clear out the monster generators by clearing out the actual lair, since most monster groups spawn from an actual place.

A bandit threat in a region can be eliminated by finding their headquarters and destroying them.
Some spawn places can also be eliminated by solutions other than straight-up combat. Think blocking off the scorpion caves in Fallout 1. Or maybe a bandit leader can be convinced by diplomacy or bribery to relocate or whatever.

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Could that bandit leader be convinced to share part of the profits with you instead?

Potentially. In our quest designs, we tend to consider different approaches a player might want to take, and an evil/asshole path is certainly a valid playstyle. Why stop bad guys when you can work with them and profit instead?

Be patient. We're still working on the systems, but yes, there should be some presentable combat footage soonish. The overworld map gameplay will take a little longer till it's presentable, as will dialogues and cities.

We'll continue with our semi-regular blogposts and reveal more details about the gameplay and about our world bit by bit. We'll try to keep up a steady pace of 1 to 3 per month with those.

They have won't have close to the resources necessary to meet those demands lol. Get a grip. BG2's itemization alone requires hand-crafting, and coding unique effects for, tons and tons and tons of items

Handcrafting - yes, but I don't think it's too hard to implement in code. Most of BG's items effects were similar to existing spells (just spell on hit or permanent buffs on the user), others were +XdY of %type% damage or +X apr. They just felt really unique because they were designed that way. They had great descriptions, which fitted with their actual properties, and really felt like magic items in a fantasy world. Compare BG2 with titles that use diablo-like itemization. +3% fire res. +7.5% move speed +5ft javelin throwing range is not a proper Magic Item.

Handcrafting - yes, but I don't think it's too hard to implement in code. Most of BG's items effects were similar to existing spells (just spell on hit or permanent buffs on the user), others were +XdY of %type% damage or +X apr. They just felt really unique because they were designed that way. They had great descriptions, which fitted with their actual properties, and really felt like magic items in a fantasy world. Compare BG2 with titles that use diablo-like itemization. +3% fire res. +7.5% move speed +5ft javelin throwing range is not a proper Magic Item.

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Yes, this. Our itemization is one of the least difficult things to implement for us. The most difficult part of creating unique items is making the 3D models, but that doesn't take a gargantuan effort either - it's much easier to do than creating new enemy models, for example, since it's just a model, no animation rigging and stuff.

Effort required for a unique BG2 style weapon = 45% 3D model, 45% coming up with a proper backstory and integrating it to the world, and 10% actual scripting implementation, if I had to give a rough estimate.

We got some pretty decent tools that let us script pretty much anything into an item. We can even have a Lilarcor-style sword that talks to you, and the bulk of the work would be to write all the dialogue. We also got a pretty good and efficient tool for writing dialogue trees (with a built-in testing functionality), so yeah.

In an hour of work, I can create between 3 and 5 unique items with their own backstory and interesting magical properties, and actually implementing them takes only a little bit of scripting depending on the item's effects. Like, say, I come up with a dagger that used to be wielded by a dreaded lich king and it paralyzes enemies on strike and does +1d4 damage against humanoids in addition to its 1d3 acid damage against all targets and its general +2 to hit and damage. All of these effects are easy to implement. If we were to take an entire weekend off to just create unique items, we'd end up with over two dozen of them or what. Probably more.

We're aware of the challenge and effort required to create a game as ambitious as this, and we're also aware of how much effort it takes/how difficult it is to implement each planned element of the game, so don't worry about that. Yes, of course, there's always the chance not every planned feature makes it into the initial release version, but if the game does well we're going to work on some expansions right away, so there's always a chance to see it later - and, most importantly, we've got a tight vision and know what we want from the game, so there won't be any terrible development decisions that fuck everything up like there was in the development of Torment: Tides of Numenera.

Btw, can you kill everyone? Or are there some plot critical NPCs that can't die. Not that I, uh... play that way or anything.

Spoiler(Move your mouse to the spoiler area to reveal the content)Show SpoilerHide Spoiler

Only on my third run.

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Since we're going for a decentralized plot structure anyway, I don't think there will be any plot critical NPCs that absolutely can't be killed.
And even if there might be one or two NPCs who are critical to finishing the game, the most you'll get would be a Morrowind-like warning that you fucked up your game when you kill them, not a magic immortality mode like in Oblivion or Skyrim.

Do keep in mind that not all of our maps are designed to be combat zones, so major cities and villages will have cramped quarters that aren't intended to be fought in. But even there, if you want to, you can start combat with anyone you want. Innocent bystanders? Major quest NPCs? Merchants? Slaughter them all. Suffer the consequences.

Only children won't be killable. They'll just disappear when combat starts.
You can change that with a mod though

Maybe just make those NPCs teleport away or something when you attack them. Then there is a ingame reason why you cannot kill them. There are 100 ways to explain why that happened.

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Nah, you can kill anyone except children. No plot armor or convenient teleport skill. We'll try to give the player alternate paths through a main quest if you kill an important NPC.
Remember how in Arcanum, when you killed P. Schuyler and Sons you could still get the information they were supposed to give you by checking their files?
We'll make sure to include workarounds like that. If the player wants to be a supreme murderhobo, he can be a supreme murderhobo.

Maybe just make those NPCs teleport away or something when you attack them. Then there is a ingame reason why you cannot kill them. There are 100 ways to explain why that happened.

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Nah, you can kill anyone except children.

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I was totally on board until you said this. Pure decline. Have laws about child killing in video games gotten more strict since Fallout?

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We're a company based in Germany, the country where Fallout 2 had children removed entirely. Same with the UK version, if I remember correctly. Bethesda didn't allow for children to be killed in their Fallouts and Skyrim because they didn't want to get slapped with a Mature or Adults Only rating. Etc etc. Unlikely as it is for an isometric turn based RPG to cause controversy over this nowadays, considering we're based in Video Game Censorship Land, we'll just leave the kids out of combat altogether.

Make it so that children can be killed, ideally with repercussions but disable the feature for the release so that users can "mod" it "back".

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We don't have death animations for the kids but modding them to stay in combat and be killable will be an easy thing to do if you want. I'd give it one month tops before someone, somewhere releases a killable children mod.

I predict that JarlFrank will quit Codex forever over this game, after the Darth Roxor review came out.

ᛚᛟᚷᚨᚦᛟᚱᛖ᛫ᚹᛟᛞᚨᚾ᛫ᚹᛁᚷᛁᚦᛟᚾᚨᚱIf you worship your enemy, you are defeated. If you adopt your enemy’s religion, you are enslaved. If you breed with your enemy, you are destroyed. Polydoros of Sparta (741 to c. 665 BC)

A right oriented website with boner for conservatives values whose USA members climax on the thought of having big guns openly carried out in public wants children to be killed.

What a surprise .

Anyway goodluck, JarlFrank . Loving everything you said about the game right now. Just a question, and I might missed it due to skimming a lot of details, but how is funding? Has your company secured a budget or are you looking for another source of investment?

How are you making sure that there is a variance and certain spread?
BG2 always had the problem that some unique weapons were so strong that not using them would just be a waste, so you knew one guy would have to skill 2H swords, one guy going for the flail, etc.
Same with the fact that some weapons could only be found so late that some char would have his "best" weapon for almost half of the game, while another char would only have it for the final 10%.

As good as the unique weapons and their backstories were, I always found all of that rather limiting. Some weapon choices were simply objectively much worse than others due to that.

Caim said:

On most parts of the internet you tell the sheep to wake up.
But on the RPG codex, the one told by the sheep to wake up is you!

Anyway goodluck, JarlFrank . Loving everything you said about the game right now. Just a question, and I might missed it due to skimming a lot of details, but how is funding? Has your company have secured a budget or are you looking for another source of investment?

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We're aiming for a Kickstarter later this year. We've studied some other Kickstarter projects and learned from the often-made mistake of developers jumping onto the platform way too soon, so we're going to take our time, spread the word, make people interested about the game, and prepare some gameplay that we can show off before we go on KS. Also, we'll launch an Early Access once we have a sizeable chunk of playable content ready to get some additional income during development.

How are you making sure that there is a variance and certain spread?
BG2 always had the problem that some unique weapons were so strong that not using them would just be a waste, so you knew one guy would have to skill 2H swords, one guy going for the flail, etc.
Same with the fact that some weapons could only be found so late that some char would have his "best" weapon for almost half of the game, while another char would only have it for the final 10%.

As good as the unique weapons and their backstories were, I always found all of that rather limiting. Some weapon choices were simply objectively much worse than others due to that.

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Since we have plenty of weapon types, we'll make sure to have a cool unique weapon for each group so we don't end up like most RPGs where swords > everything else. BG2's flail of ages was amazing, but then there were also way more unique swords and only the one flail.
We'll offer a variety of unique weapons within each weapon group, and some of them will have equally useful stats so making a choice between Axe of Buttkicking and Axe of Facepunching will be hard because one isn't objectively better than the other, they just have different uses.

For example, one unique weapon I recently designed belonged to a legendary hero who drove off a certain monster type from the lands of Hirru. This weapon is more effective against that monster type. So when you're going against these things, equipping this weapon is a good idea.
It's still a decent weapon in general, but against other types of foes, you'd rather use something else.

Situational bonuses and bonuses that depend on foes rather than bonuses that apply universally are one way to diversify the selection of unique weapons, and make different uniques more or less useful according to the circumstances.

Furthermore, the really powerful unique weapons will be found in challenging dungeons with hard enemy encounters and maybe some puzzles to solve. Won't be easy to get your hands on. And since our game has a non-linear structure, you can get them in any order you want. Feel suicidal and wanna go for that supergood unique weapon in the level 15 dungeon when your party is level 10? You can try, nobody's stopping you.

Weapons in the style of the Flail of Ages are also a good solution, and a thing we are going for. They start out reasonably good, and become more and more powerful as you find more pieces and add them to the weapon. We're spreading these pieces around rather than having them all placed in the same dungeon.

Besides, most of the early game will be fought with standard or minimally enchanted equipment. The powerful stuff will only become attainable for you in the later stages of the game, when your party is strong enough to master the challenges behind which the unique items are sealed. You might even find an incredibly difficult dungeon in the first area of the game, impossible to even attempt at your level - then you note down its location, remember it for later, and return when you've gained some levels.

IMO don't knock yourself over weapon balance and shit like that. As long as every weapon type have great options, I don't think it matters much that some are broken/way better than others. It's more important you secure breadth of content considering your limited resources.